Christie source: Run still possible

About that closed door for Chris Christie on the 2012 race? Not so much.

Despite a Fox News report that he had firmly closed the door and his own brother telling a reporter he isn’t running, a source told POLITICO that the New Jersey governor is still considering entering the presidential campaign.

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The latest up-and-down about Christie’s intentions came Tuesday afternoon, after a week of speculation about whether the governor really is reassessing a run or is simply giving a polite hearing to aggressive Republican donors and elites who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Fox News reported Christie as having given the possibility of a run an emphatic “no," as did the Newark Star-Ledger, which quoted his brother, Todd Christie, saying a run is out of the question.

“I’m sure that he’s not going to run,” Christie told the paper. “If he’s lying to me, I’ll be as stunned as I’ve ever been in my life.”

And Fox News head honcho Roger Ailes has a strong relationship with Chris Christie. The network’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, is also among those urging Christie to get in, multiple sources said.

The broader sense has been that Christie was mouthing lines such as “I’ll keep you posted” to eager donors — whose help he will want in a 2013 reelection bid in his home state — but was never actually thinking about it.

But former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, a Christie adviser, told National Review that the governor is seriously thinking about it and the stories about his deliberations are “real.”

And a source familiar with Christie’s thinking told POLITICO today that his brother’s words aside, the governor is, in fact, considering a campaign, although nothing has changed in the practical sense from his “no,” which he has made publicly upon threat of suicide.

And even those begging him to run are, at this point, fairly skeptical.

“People are hoping, but most think he’s not running,” said one fundraising source.

The Christie frenzy reached new heights over the past week as it became clear that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is failing to clear a basic bar with conservatives and some bundlers. Christie, after a small meeting with major donors last week, had appeared to indicate he would reconsider their pleas, two Republican sources told POLITICO.

And the intense interest was only fueled by a previously scheduled trip Christie is currently on to raise money for the New Jersey GOP and for other candidates nationally. He’ll deliver a speech tonight on American exceptionalism in the political debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library as part of the cross-country swing.

He is fundraising for the New Jersey GOP with Meg Whitman, a Mitt Romney supporter, today in California.